Bullet Revisited #35 2013

Lalla Essaydi made this photograph, Bullet Revisited #35, and you can see that it is a photograph, but there is a painterly sensibility at play. What do you think she was thinking when she covered the women and the walls with bullet shells? What does it mean to reclaim bullets in this way? It almost seems like the figures are dissolving into the background, and the background is dissolving into the figures, so that you don’t know what’s what anymore. The patterning effect of the shells makes everything seem very ornate. It is tempting to see this as an embrace of ornamentation, decoration, pattern, and beauty. It reminds me of the work of other women artists working in photography, like Cindy Sherman, who question our assumptions around identity, gender, and culture through staging and masquerade. Essaydi’s work is part of a larger conversation of artists who use pattern to explore themes of identity, politics, and personal history.